Fringe Pushes Back Against Cornyn’s NICS Background Check Fix

I was on vacation last week when Senator John Cornyn introduced a bill that intends to fix holes in the FBI’s NICS background check system, while preventing the Obama Administration’s attempts to abuse the Veterans Administration and Social Security Administration to deny gun rights to millions of citizens.

A top Senate Republican is moving to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally ill amid growing calls from gun-safety advocates to strengthen background checks after a series of high-profile mass shootings.

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the second-ranking Senate Republican, will introduce legislation Wednesday designed to encourage local communities to identify gun applicants who are seriously mentally ill.

The Mental Health and Safe Communities Act is backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), despite the gun lobby’s fierce resistance to gun control policies. Cornyn notes the legislation will “fix the existing background check system without expanding it.”

The legislation will also provide more treatment options for people who are dangerously mentally ill.

“While potentially dangerous mentally-ill individuals are often known to law enforcement and local officials, gaps in existing law or inadequate resources prevent our communities from taking proactive steps to prevent them from becoming violent,” Cornyn said in a statement.

Cornyn’s Mental Health and Safe Communities Act (MHSCA) hopes to provide resources to local and state governments to ensure that the dangerously mentally ill who are “prohibited persons” under the law have their records uploaded to NICS faster and more consistently. If such information was uploaded from law enforcement and mental health professionals in a timely manner, some of the nation’s mass shootings might have been prevented. At the very minimum, it would make it more difficult for the truly mentally ill to acquire weapons from FFLs.

In a move that is perhaps even more important based on the number of people affected, MHSCA would also roll-back the Obama Administration assault on the gun rights of veterans and those on social security, as noted by the NRA-ILA, which is strongly backing the bill.

On August 5th, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced S. 2002, a bill to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens from continued bureaucratic abuse by the Obama Administration.As we reported on July 18th, Obama’s latest gun grabbing ploy was to forward all individuals receiving Social Security Administration (SSA) benefits through a representative payee to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) as “prohibited persons” under federal firearms law.This is estimated to impact over 4 million Americans.

But this approach is nothing new to Obama bureaucrats.In fact, stripping Second Amendment rights by administrative fiat has become Obama’s favored tactic in the face of Congress’ refusal to pass gun control.As we’ve previously reported, the Veterans Administration (VA) was the first to develop an administrative mechanism to forward records to NICS without due process protections in place.The VA is doing so for those veterans who have a fiduciary assigned to their account.This is being done without any adjudication or finding that such veterans pose a danger to the community, but simply because they need help managing their financial affairs.

While Obama may relish the ease by which his pencil-pushers can deprive American citizens of constitutional protections, the NRA has pressed Congress for legislation to end this abuse. Senator Cornyn answered our call by introducing S. 2002, a bill that provides critical protections needed in the face of Obama’s bureaucratic onslaught.

It seems like a no-brainer of a bill to pass for Senate Republicans, based on what it would do for millions being targeted by the Obama Administration via the VA and Social Security alone. The fact that it fills in the gaps in the existing NICS system and make it more difficult for the dangerously mentally ill to acquire firearms is icing on the proverbial cake.

Bizarrely, Dudley Brown, President of the National Association for Gun Rights, has come out strongly against the Cornyn bill in a letter to NAGR supporters.

Have they lost their minds?

“Republican” Senate Leader John Cornyn (R-TX) and his buddies in the Establishment Gun Lobby are plotting to surrender to the Left Wing Media by pushing a major piece of anti-gun legislation.

According to major news stories on Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, Newsmax, and Politico, Cornyn is introducing new legislation that strips more Americans of their gun rights, without a trial or due process, under some ill-defined heading of “mental illness.”

I have been sounding the alarm over just such a sell-out for the last six months.

Cornyn and his U.S. Senate cronies are scheming to give Barack Obama the names of EVEN MORE gun-owning Americans.

They want to use taxpayer funds to bribe state governments to funnel the names of even more Americans into the National Insta-Check System (NICS), or as I call it, the Brady Registration system.

I suppose the heat of summer may have gone to their heads.

One thing is clear; they’ve lost touch with common sense and most of all, reality.

That’s why I hope you will IMMEDIATELY sign your “Stop Cornyn’s Gun Control Act” Fax Petition to U.S. Senator John Cornyn and your U.S. Senators.

Join me in urging them to abandon this idiotic gun control scheme.

I need your help today to expose this ridiculous preemptive surrender by supposedly “pro-gun” Republicans.

John Cornyn is ready to surrender more Americans to the anti-gun media and Barack Obama instead of getting rid of the broken and unconstitutional Brady Registration system with recent evidence of its catastrophic failures.

Senator Cornyn thinks he can curry favor with the media elites and Democrats in Congress by bringing a “bi-partisan” push for MORE money, MORE power, and MORE names of law-abiding gun owners to “fix” the Brady Registration system.

By wrapping themselves in the blood of the victims, they’re trying to distract gun owners like you and me from their real plot of expanded background checks, universal gun registration and a backdoor gun ban.

Cornyn’s legislation will lead to:
*** Even more MONEY thrown away at the NICS system. Instead of dismantling the broken system, they want to waste more money on it.

*** Even more NAMES recorded into the NICS-Brady Registration system. More names of law-abiding gun owners for the government to track.

*** Even more POWER to create a MASSIVE federal database of gun owners and gun purchases. A database that could be used for political harassment, voter suppression, IRS retribution, or even worse, attacks on gun owners.

*** Anti-gun FEDERAL Bureaucrats using NICS-Brady and Obamacare databases to ban millions of Americans from purchasing or possessing firearms.

Cornyn and his cronies want to give states the money and resources to RADICALLY expand the Brady Registration system.

Federal Bureaucrats will use this new power –under the guise of “mental health” screenings — to create just cause to prohibit potentially millions of individuals from purchasing a gun without authority and due process of law.

They want to assume ALL gun buyers are CRAZY, until proven sane!

There’s more to Brown’s letter, but you get the gist of his position.

He’s certainly full of fire, but in his rush to condemn the Cornyn bill he’s making wild accusations that simply can’t be supported with anything close to facts. MHSCA will not expand the NICS system, but fixed acknowledged reporting holes. Nothing remotely suggests that the bill will lead to registration or secret databases. Finally, Brown is daft for suggesting that it will manufacture a scheme to deny millions of Americans their Second Amendment rights, when it was in fact authored to specifically counter existing moves by Obama via the VA and SSA. It’s as if Brown is reading from an entirely different script.

Amusingly, Brown is a huge supporter of Kentucky Senator and 2016 Presidential candidate Rand Paul, who voted in favor of S.A. 725 in 2013, which was a much more restrictive amendment, and which didn’t provide the protections for gun owners that is the key aspect of Cornyn’s bill.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com.
Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun.
He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.
https://bearingarms.com/author/bobowens-bearingarms/